End of Classical Antiquity
The '''Classical Antiquity' lasted from about 776 BC until 476 AD. The choice of these dates is obviously a Eurocentric view, covering the centuries from the emergence of the Greco-Roman world, until it at last cracked apart with the fall of the Western Roman Empire. This millennium or so saw empires of unprecedented size and complexity in other parts of the globe too. They were not equally successful, some of them lasting several centuries while others declined or disappeared rapidly, even if after spectacular flowerings. All faced common problems associated with maintaining huge armies and a central bureaucracy; the cost fell most heavily on the peasantry, while land-owning nobles increasingly evaded centralized control, and barbarian pressure on the frontiers hastened internal dissolution. In China, the Qin Dynasty (221–206 BC) succeeded in reuniting this great land mass after the gradual collapse of the ancient Zhou Dynasty. While harsh autocracy was effective in creating an empire in a military fashion, it proved perhaps unworkable for governing it in peacetime. The Qin lasted only fifteen years, before collapsing into widespread civil war, from which emerged the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD). Later dynasties would looked back to the Han period as a Golden Age, that created a cultural identity among its populace still remembered in the term "Han Chinese", used today to signify someone who is ethnically Chinese. At its peak, their empire spanned the whole of modern China, and penetrated Korea in the east, Mongolia in the north, Vietnam in the south, and as far west as the Pamir Mountains (modern day Tajikistan). Han involvement in Central Asian prompted them to seek new allies against the troublesome steppe-nomads, most famously the 13-year journey of Zhang Qian (d. 113 BC); the first fully documented contact between China and the Greco-Roman world. Twenty years after his return, the Silk Road' '''was an established thoroughfare of transcontinental trade. Han China gradually became the largest economy of the classical world. Science and technology during the period saw significant advances too, including the process of papermaking, junk ship capable of venturing into the open ocean, the use of negative numbers in mathematics, the raised-relief map, a three-dimensional representation of the celestial sphere in astronomy, and a seismometer to discern the direction of distant earthquakes. In China, dynasties would rise and fall, but, by sharp contrast to the Mediterranean-European world, dynastic unity would be restored. After 92 AD, palace power struggles combined with large peasant revolts to cause the Han's slow decline and ultimate downfall. In China, by sharp contrast to the Mediterranean-European world, there was nothing like the scale of cultural and economic collapse of the so-called ''Dark Ages. ''Dynasties would rise and fall, but political unity would eventually be restored with a striking level of continuity. Two factors were crucial in this: the enduring Confucian bureaucracy, and China’s remarkable powers of cultural assimilation. ''Barbarian ''invaders invariably lost their own identities in time, and became only another kind of Chinese. For India, classical antiquity encompasses the period from the Maurya Empire (322-185 BC), up until the end of the Gupta Empire (320-550 AD). Soon after the departure of Alexander the Great from north-western India, Chandragupta Maurya founded the first great Indian empire, the Maurya Empire. It reached it's peak under his grandson Ashoka, one of India's most illustrious rulers; the Lion Capital of Ashoka is the national emblem of the modern Republic of India. He controlled all the Indian subcontinent except for the extreme southern part, the largest political entity to have existed in the Indian subcontinent until the 20th-century. He is remembered for his vigorous patronage of Buddhism, whose vitality during this time may be seen in the religion's first great expansion to Burma and Sri Lanka. His empire began to crumble soon after his death, and India descended into four centuries of regionalism. The most important process during this time was a fresh infusion of Greco-Persian and Central Asian influences into Indian culture, and vice versa: the sculpture of the era shows a Hellenistic flavour, trade along the Silk Road became substantial; Buddhism spread to China; and Christianity reach India. India's classical antiquity reached its zenith in the Gupta Empire of northern India. During the Golden Age of the Guptas, virtually every aspect of culture flourished; philosophy, literature, science, mathematics, architecture, astronomy, technology, art, engineering, religion, and astronomy. A layman can perhaps glimpse its importance from the invention of the decimal system by Indian mathematicians in the 5th century AD. Strong trade ties saw India's cultural influence felt as far away as Burma, Sri Lanka, and Southeast Asia. It was also during this era that Hinduism asserted a new strictness of conservative religious practice, whose outstanding expression was the Caste System and increasing subordination of women. The Romans had thought their civilisation was the best conceivable, and were proud of it. They were not unique in this. The same was true of men in other parts of the world. Most of the globe’s surface was then still without civilization, but what was civilized fell into relatively few zones in each of which powerful, distinctive, often self-conscious and largely independent traditions were at work. One result was that Chinese, Indian, western European and Persian Islamic civilizations all lived independently long enough to leave ineradicable traces in the ground-plan of our world. History Classical Antiquity in India If the Harappan and Aryan cultures, and the Vedic period laid the foundations of Indian civilization, then Chandragupta Maurya (d. 297 BC) was the founder of its first great empire; the '''Maurya Empire' (322-185 BC). Indian sources say nothing of Alexander the Great’s arrival in India in 326 BC, as the great conqueror only disrupted the petty-kingdoms of the Punjab, not the heartland of Indian power. At that time, the kingdom of Magadha, centre at Patna in the of the Ganges delta, dominated the Ganges Valley, having annexed or subjugated what had been the sixteen Mahajanapadas kingdoms. Much of what is known about Chandragupta’s life and origins are shrouded in mystery, coming mostly from legend and folklore. It is said that he overthrew the ruling dynasty of Magadha in 322 BC, to establish the Maurya Empire, with the help of the philosopher-statesman Kautilya, who became his chief adviser, mentor, and guide. Chandragupta rapidly consolidated his control over the Ganges Valley, built a strong army, and continued expanding over northern India. By 317 BC, expansion westwards had brought Chandragupta into conflict with Seleucid Persia (312-63 BC), part of the empire left behind by Alexander. The war ended in 303 BC with a peace treaty, whereby the Greeks withdrew from the Indus Valley beyond the Khyber Pass, and in exchange gifting Seleucus with 500 war-elephants for his wars against the other Hellenistic kingdoms. In addition, Chandragupta may have taken the hand of Seleucus' daughter in marriage, while Seleucus dispatched the Greek ambassador Megasthenes (d. 290 BC) to Chandragupta's court, who recorded his impressions of India during this time. According to Megasthenes, Chandragupta inhabited a magnificent palace at Patna (made of wood so archaeology still cannot help us yet), and presided over a centralised state, or at least something that aspired to be one. There was a large and powerful army, an elaborate hierarchical bureaucracy, a well-developed espionage network for both internal and external security, and diplomaic missions which eventually ranged as far afield as Epirus in Greece. Weights and measures were standardised across the empire, and gold, bronze, and copper coins were prevalent, as was barter; there was bustling internal and external trade. About the empire’s inhabitants, Megasthenes is informative too. He distinguished the three religious traditions (Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism), mentioned the habit of eating rice, and remarked on the surprising fact in Greek eyes that in India there were no slaves; he was wrong but understandably so. Though Indians were not bought and sold in absolute servitude, they were strictly bound to their status by the Caste System. Megasthenes also reported that the king diverted himself by hunting, which was done from raised platforms or from the backs of elephants. By the end of his reign, Chandragupta had established the first kingdom in India's history to deserve the broader title of empire. His son and successor Bindusara (d. 272) turned the expansive course of empire to the south. By his death, a large part of the Indian subcontinent was under Mauryan suzerainty. The Maurya Empire reached its peak under Bindusara's son, Ashoka (268-232 BC), who seized the throne after a fratricidal succession dispute; some stories refer to him killing his 99 half-brothers in remorseless pursuit of power. Nevertheless, Ashoka is one of India's most illustrious rulers; the Lion Capital of Ashoka is today the national emblem of the Republic of India. For the first eight years of his 37-years reign, Ashoka ruled the empire like his father and grandfather had, in an effective but callous and cruel way. He inherited a huge empire stretching from north-west into Afghanistan, north-east into Assam, and south to Karnataka. However, a powerful kingdom on the east coast, Kalinga (modern-day Odisha), remained outside the pale. Ashoka determined to conquer it, something that his predecessors had already attempted. Kalinga defended itself stubbornly and honourably, but lost in a war of notable savagery with a death toll numbering more than 100,000. The appalling suffering caused Ashoka to reevaluate his notion of conquest by violence, and he was gradually drawn to the Buddhist religion, with its principle of non-violence. For the rest of his reign, he brought peace, harmony and prosperity to the largest empire that has ever existed on the Indian subcontinent. The achievement that he was most proud of was what might be called his "social services": shade trees were planted, wells dug, and rest-houses established along the roads for the benefit of merchants and travellers; health care was provided for men and beasts; officials were instructed to help the poor and the elderly; and great irrigation works were undertaken to bring areas of wasteland under cultivation. He is most famous for the Ashoka Pillars, royal edicts to his subjects carve on stone and erected throughout his empire, which emphasize his care for the welfare of his people; devices rather like Hammurabi's stone stele. Under Ashoka, a documented history of India at last begins to be possible. Asoka was a lavish patron of Buddhism; he is credited with constructing 84,000 stupas, though this is obviously an exaggeration. The vitality of Buddhism during his reign may be seen in the first great expansion of the faith, which had hitherto remained confined to north-eastern India. Missionaries to Burma, Sri Lanka, and Nepal all enjoyed success. It could be said that Asoka did for Buddhism, what Emperor Constantine would do for Christianity, except that Ashoka did not evangelise with his own subjects; a central theme of his edicts was respect for the dignity of all men and all religions. Ashoka's benevolent rule proved perhaps ill-suited for holding together a huge, diverse, and religiously heterogeneous empire. After his death a political decline set in, and it collapsed altogether in 185 BC. Thereafter the story of India for four centuries was once more one of confusion and political disunity. The country splintered into many small kingdoms and a series of regional empires, none of which could match the stability or enduring historical legacy of the Mauryans. Despite the multiplicity of ruling powers, this was a period of intense development. One was the cystanization of classical Hinduism, perhaps in part as a reaction to the rise of Buddhism under Ashoka. It was in the 2nd-century BC that the two great Sanskrit epics, the Mahabharata and Ramayana, began to take their final form, bringing new prominence to important new cults, which took a place in the Hindu worship they were never to lose; Krishna, the god of compassion, tenderness and love; Rama, the embodiment of the benevolent king, good husband and son, a family god; and Devi, the mother-godess. These legendary dialogues interspersed with philosophical treatises offered vast possibilities of emotional connection to the worshipper. Other important changes resulted from a new succession of incursions into India from the historic north-western routes. First came the Bactrians, descendants of the Greeks left behind by Alexander’s empire in what is now Afghanistan, who had broken away from Seleucid Persia by 239 AD. They brought fresh foreign influences once more into Indian culture, such as Greco-Roman realism in sculpture, particularly of the Buddha. Among those who followed and established themselves at different times in the north-western India were Parthians and Scythians, but the most consequential intruders were the Kushans. The Kushans were steppe-nomads, who had succeeded the Bactrians in Afghanistant around 30 AD, soon settling, becoming Hellenized, and adopting Buddhism. The new kingdom was ideally placed to exploit the burgeoning trade along the Silk Road, and steadily expanded in all directions. At its height under Kanishka the Great (d. 140 AD), the Kusham Empire stretched from the borders of Parthian Persia to China, and into India beyond Varanasi on the central Ganges. Trade between India and the rest of the world became substantial, both along the Silk Road and the Indian Ocean trade network. The Indo-Roman trade route grew so visibly that the stateman Pliny (d. 113) blamed it for draining gold out of the Empire; the Mediterranean markets sought spices and luxuries, and could offer little in return except bullion. There are other interesting signs of intercontinental contacts arising from trade. Christianity appeared in India possibly as early as the 1st-century AD. Buddhism entered China before the 2nd-century AD, prompting several Chinese travellers and monks to visit India. Hinduism and Buddhism spread across Southeast Asia. Political unity did not appear again until the 3rd-century AD, and then only in the north. The central territory of the Gupta Empire (280-550 AD) was the same as that of the Mauryas, along the lower stretch of the Ganges around Patna. The rise of the Guptas began under their third king, another Chandragupta (d. 335 AD). His fortuitous marriage to a princess of the powerful Lichchhavi kingdom helped him rapidly extend his territory over the Ganges Valley so successfully that he granted himself a new imperial title, Maharajadhiraja ("king of great kings"). The Gupta empire was further extended by his son Samudragupta (d. 370) and reached its greatest extent under Chandragupta II (d. 415), stretching from the Indus River in the west to the Bengal region in the east, and from the Himalayan foothills in the north to the Narmada River in the south. The Chinese monk and traveller, Faxian (d. 422 AD), visited India at this time, on a pilgrimage to the Buddha's birthplace, and left an account of his impressions. He described a people rich and contented, ruled by enlightened and just kings. It was not so big an empire as Asoka’s, but the Guptas preserved theirs longer, and it was later looked back to as a Golden Age of India. Though themselves devout Hundus, the Guptas recognised that the well-being of their empire lay in cordial relations with all believers, and supported thriving Buddhist and Jain cultures as well. In the Gupta era north Indian art came to its mature, classical form for all the major religious groups. Although painting was evidently widespread, the surviving works are almost all religious sculpture. It saw the emergence of the iconic carved-stone deity in Hindu art, as well as the Buddha-figure and Jain tirthankara figures, these last often on a very large scale. The finest examples of the period are found in the famous caves at Ajanta, Elephanta, and Ellora; respectively Buddhist, Hindu, and mixed including Jain. Before the Gupta dynasty, there are hardly any remains of stone temples, which are the great glories of Indian architecture; no doubt there were earlier timber structures. The temple at Bhitargaon in Uttar Pradesh is one of the largest and most complete. From this time India’s artistic life is mature and self-sustaining. Gupta civilization was also remarkable for its literary achievement, with the final flowering of Sanskrit. By this time, the spoken languages of India had long been evolving in their own separate directions, but Sanskrit was a tie uniting all the educated elite of the subcontinent; much like Latin in medieval Europe. The court of Chandragupta II was particularly illustrious, in that it was graced by the so-called Navaratna (Nine Jewels), a group who excelled in the literary arts. Among them was Kālidāsa, widely regarded as the greatest poet in Sanskrit. He was also a dramatist, and in the Gupta era there emerged from the shadowy past the Indian theatre whose traditions have carried into the Bollywood film industry of the 20th century. Representing a less typical genre of Gupta literature was the Kama Sutra by Vatsyayana, a manual on the art of love. Intellectually, too, the Gupta era was a great one. Indian mathematics was especially advanced, probably more so than anywhere in the world at the time. The decimal system was an Indian invention later borrowed by the Arabs and then introduced to Europe as Arabic numerals. There was comparable progress in astronomy. Aryabhata (b. 476) calculated π (pi) and the solar year to four decimal places, and correctly postulated that the Earth was spherical and rotated on its axis. Two medical treatises by Caraka and Sushruta outlined all of the major concepts of Ayurvedic medicine with innovative chapters on surgery, also dates to the Gupta period. The history of Chess starts here, with an early form of the game known as Caturaṅga (''"four divisions"); infantry, cavalry, war-elephant, and chariot pieces that would evolve into the modern pawn, knight, bishop, and rook respectively. During this period, India's economy is estimated to have been the largest in the world, having around one-quarter of the world's wealth. The Guptas never penetrated far to the south. After the Maurya era, it was not again truly integrated politically with the north until the coming of the Mughal Empire in the 16th-century. The south's cultural distinction persists even today. The first hints of a fresh invasion from Central Asia came in the reign of Kumaragupta (d. 455). The threat was that of a nomadic people known in Indian sources as the Alchon Huns. We can only speculate on whether they had any relation to the Huns which invaded Europe at around the same time. Certainly they behaved like them. Kumaragupta and his son Skandagupta (d. 467) managed to rally Gupta strength for a while, but then the situation deteriorated under a succession of weak rulers. In the 480s the Alchon Huns broke through the Gupta defenses, devastating much of the north-west. Although the intruders were eventually driven-out in 528, northern India was left in complete disarray. By 550, when the dynasty apparently came to an end, the kingdom had dwindled to a small size. Northern India once again fragmented into small kingdoms and regional empires, that would lack the strength to resisted the next intruders from the north-west; among them the Muslims. Classical Antiquity in China If the tiny Shang Dynasty and feudal Zhou Dynasty were the cradles of Chinese civilisation, then the Qin Dynasty would bring all the lands of the Chinese for the first time under the rule of one great empire. From the 7th-century BC, Zhou rule effectively collapsed as different states broke-away from central rule, although the dynasty itself survived until 256 BC as little more than a ceremonial and religious figurehead. The next five hundred years of Chinese history was characterised by almost constant conflict between regional warlords. By 476 BC, roughly a hundred petty-kingdoms had been reduced to just seven, marking the beginning of the next distinguishable epoch, significantly known as the '''Warring States Period '(476–221 BC). The seven states were Qin, Han, Wei, Zhao, Chu, Qi, and Yan. These declining centuries of the Zhou were both warlike and intellectually very rich; the time of the Hundred Schools of Thought. Although this era was the cradle for the two most lasting schools of Chinese thought, Confucianism and Taoism, it was brought to an end by a more brutal philosophy, usually described as Legalism. It cannot be traced to any one person, but the statesmand Shen Buhai (d. 337 BC) may have had more influence than any other. This school responded to the lawlessness of the age by demanding more teeth for the state, calling for strong central authority and enforcing social order by a strict system of rewards and punishments; the Book of Lord Shang ''proclaims, "''punishment produces force, force produces strength, strength produces awe, awe produces virtue." The ratio was one reward to every nine punishments. The state of Qin was in the west, serving as a barrier between civilised China and the barbarian lands. Indeed the Qin were themselves looked upon by some as barbarous as late as the 4th-century BC. The groundwork for their conquest of China was laid the statesman Shang Yang (d. 338 BC), who passionately embraced the Legalist philosophy. Among his innovations was a massive expansion of the army beyond the nobility, granting the peasantry land in return for service; essentially total war, rather than traditional feudal chivalry. However tough and strict laws were imposed with draconian punishments for the slightest of offences, there was a strong element of meritocracy to the Qin, with officials and soldiers rewarded regardless of their backgrounds. Legalism helped to establish a strong army, a disciplined bureaucracy, an obedient populace, and the unquestioned authority of a strong central government. It also gave the Qin a healthy disregard for claims of preeminence by the feeble Zhou with their empty religious ritual. Tactically their armies embraced the ideas of another prominent school of thought, still remembered today through Sun Tzu's famous work, The Art of War. In 256 the Qin overran Zhou, bringing to an abrupt end a dynasty that had lasted on paper more than 800 years. In the following decades they conquered and annexed each of the other five kingdoms, with the last subdued in 221 BC. Although the Qin Dynasty '(221-206) was short-lived, there is justice in them giving China the name by which the world has known the region ever since; Qin is pronounced “''chin”. Ying Zheng (221-210), the Qin ruler who succeeded in unifying China and claimed the Mandate of Heaven, ''gave himself an appropriate new title; Qin Shi Huang, literally meaning the first "''emperor". He thus inaugurated Imperial China that would last with interruption and adaptation for two millennia, until 1912 AD. Qin Shi Huang was a strong and energetic ruler, who worked quickly to unite all the lands of the Chinese under a tightly centralised Legalist government seated at Xi'an. One of the most important outcomes was providing the basis for a cohesive state, by the standardisation of the diverse practices of the earlier states, including the legal code, the written language, weights-and-measures, and currency. Even something as basic as the length of axles for carts had to be made uniform, to match ruts in the roads. Yet there is no doubt that his methods were undoubtedly cruel; a dictatorship based on terror. All non-''Legalist'' philosophies, such as Confucianism and Daoism, were suppressed. Books were burned and only "useful" works on divination, medicine or agriculture were spared; though one of the more drastic allegations, the infamous execution of 460 Confucian scholars by burying them alive, does appear to be untrue, and is in all likelihood Han era propaganda. If a person did not behave according to the rules, much use an escalating scale of Legalist punishments; branding on the forehead, cutting off the nose, cutting off the feet, castration, and death. Those who were judged not to be contributing to the state, were set to work on a series of engineering marvels involving hundreds-of-thousands of conscripts. These included a network of over 4,000 miles of road connecting the provinces to improve communication and trade, and incorporating lengths of earlier walls built by the separate Chinese kingdoms into 1400 miles of continuous barrier against the barbarians; little remains of this original construction, with the modern '''Great Wall of China mostly of Ming Dynasty vintage. The Qin also expanded the empire south of the Yangtze River to the coast, attracted by the lucrative maritime trade routes; the conquest was secured with the building of the twenty-mile-long Lingqu Canal. Later in his life, Qin Shi Huang became obsessed with fear of death, having survived at least three assassination attempts, and desperately sought the fabled elixir of life; he probably died of mercury poisoning in his search. His desire to provide for himself in the afterlife led him to commission a palace-sized mausoleum with an army of several thousand full-sized terracotta warriors created to serve him in eternity; the famous Terracotta Army of Xi'an. It remained undiscovered for centuries until found by farmers digging a well in 1974. While Legalism was ''effective in creating an empire in a military fashion, it proved perhaps unworkable for governing it in peacetime, for the Qin Dynasty did not long outlive its founder. Turmoil followed the death of Qin Shi Huang in 210 BC. During it his chief minister received his own dose of ''Legalist medicine, dying after suffering through each of the first four punishments in turn. The great legacy of the Qin is that henceforth the Chinese would never forget the political ideal that the natural condition of their great land mass was to be a single entity. With the fall of the Qin Dynasty, China was plunged into another brief period of chaos. The two leaders of the rebel alliance that overthrew the Qin in 206 BC, Liu Bang of Han and Xiang Yu of Western Chu, quickly became antagonists for the vacant throne. Qin Shi Huang had unified China by ignoring the old rules of chivalry, lessons lost on neither general, and battles between the Han and the Chu claimed thousands of lives and destroyed vast areas of farmland. Liu Bang emerged victorious following the Battle of Gaixia (202 BC), unified most of China under his control, and established the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD) with its capital at Xi'an; he is known to posterity as Emperor Gaozu of Han which means "exalted forefather". The Han are the first of the so-called five great Chinese dynasties, which each controlled the entirity of China for a span of centuries: the others being the T'ang (618-907), Song (960-1234), Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1912). All the subsequent dynasties looked back to the Han period as a Golden Age, and the term Han is still used today to signify someone who is ethnically Chinese. Emperor Gaozu (202-195 BC) had realised the ultimate rags-to-riches-story, having risen from peasant stock, to local imperial official, to rebel leader, to king of the Han, and finally to standing atop China alone and unchallenged. As befits his origins, he was a rough character, who at first had little respect for the Confucian intellectuals. Confronted by the practical problems of governing the empire, he overcame his aversion to them, with their emphasis on the ethical basis of government in a well-structured society. The transition from Legalism to Confucianism was a gradual process, whereby the Han reestablished the centralised government of the Qin, but progressively made it more benevolent: the harsh punishments were abolished; extravagance was avoiding in personal behavior; taxes and conscripted labour were reduced; tolerance was practiced for all philosophies; and a sort of welfare state was established for widows and widowers, orphans and the elderly. By 136 BC, the Han made the Confucians the exclusive scholar-officials of the state, banning scholars of other disciplines from court, and encouraging nominees for office to receive a Confucian-based education at the Imperial University that was established in 124 BC; the university had 30,000 students by the 2nd-century AD. The philosophy gained a strength similar to Buddhism under Indian Emperor Ashoka or Christianity after Roman Emperor Constantine. The Han emperors experimented with the famous imperial examination system to select candidates for state bureaucracy, though it wasn't until the Song Dynasty that the examinations reach their mature form as the cornerstone of the imperial system. The examinations were designed to show which candidates had the best grasp of the moral tradition discernible in the classical texts, as well as to test mechanical abilities and the capacity to excel under pressure; it made for one of the most effective and ideologically homogeneous bureaucracies the world has ever seen. Although theoretically merit-based and open to all Chinese, only the landed nobility could afford the education needed to pass, so the earlier division of Chinese society between the peasantry and nobility transitioned into one between commoners and scholar-gentry. But a continuing search for talent was not quite confined to the established gentry families; learning always provided some social mobility. In favouring Confucianism, the Han set a pattern that would endured until the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911. After sixty years of consolidation, the ambitious Emperor Wu DI (141-87 BC) brought the empire to its zenith. He is one of the most celebrated emperors in all Chinese history, remembered as a great soldier-emperor, who extended the empire in all directions. At its height, the empire's borders spanned the whole of modern China proper, penetrated Korea in the east, Inner Mongolia and much of Manchuria in the north, part of Vietnam in the south, and as far west as the Pamir Mountains (modern day Tajikistan). He roughly doubled the size of the Han empire of China during his reign; a territory as big as that of their Roman contemporaries. Seeking allies against a powerful confederacy of steppe nomads called the Xiongnu, Emperor Wu was intrigued by reports that they had enemies living to the west of them. In 138 BC, he dispatched an envoy on a dangerous mission west to try and make an alliance, Zhang Qian (d. 113 BC), one of the great adventurer of world history. He and his delegation were almost immediately captured by the Xiongnu. Zhang was initially enslaved, but gradually gained the trust of his captors, who gave him a wife with whom he had a son. After about 10 years, he escaped, together with his wife, son and faithful slave, and continue on his mission. His search for allies proved fruitless, but he reached as far as the Greek-speaking kingdom of Bactria, and gathered information on Parthian Persia, India, and other states from merchants. The little group then returned to China, arriving back through the Jade Gate thirteen years after they set out, with the first fully documented contact between China and the Greco-Roman world; fourteen-centuries before the more famous journey of Marco Polo. Twenty years after his return, the Silk Road '''was an established thoroughfare of transcontinental trade, connecting China to the Mediterranean. Cities rose along the trade routes which were famous for their wealth and skills; Bokhara, Samarkand, and Merv, among others. The subsequent unification of Central Asia and Northern India within the Kushan Empire (c. 30-230 AD) would further reinforce the role of the powerful merchant families from east and west. Chinese silk obviously became the dominant product traded, and was all the rage in the late Roman Republic and Roman Empire; in 14 AD the Senate issued an edict prohibiting the wearing of silk, blaming it for draining gold out of the Empire. Gradually another even easier trade route emerged in the sea journey along the coast. Merchant vessel may have been trading between Canton and Calcutta as early as the 1st-century AD. By the 8th-century AD, the India Ocean Trade route was flourishing, and stretched as far as the Swahili city-states of eastern Africa in the west, and to the island of Java in the east. The long period of peace and stability under the Han Dynasty helped China gradually became the largest economy of the classical world, and make great innovations in science and technology. This was a brilliant culture, centred on a capital with huge, magnificent palaces, rich temple, and multi-story courtyard houses. Unhappily no physical architecture survives from the Han period, since they were built in the main of wood, which decays rapidly. On the other hand, wood is easily repaired, replaced and repainted. The conservative tendency in Chinese culture means that the general style seems to have changed little in the 2000 years. The Han Chinese discovered the process for paper-making; this is traditionally credited to a court eunuch called Cai Lun in the year 105 AD. The use of paper spread quickly through the empire, though it wasn't used as a writing material for over a century; before that it was largely used to wrap fish. Xu Shen (d. 148) compiled the first comprehensive dictionary of Chinese characters, an invaluable tool for modern historians in deciphering archaeological inscriptions. Sima Quin (d. 86 BC) has been called the father of Chinese historiography, producing a vast history of China which covers a period of over 2,500 years, Records of the Grand Historian. This established the standard model for all of imperial histories, such as the Book of Han written by Ban Biao (d. 54 AD) and his children. During Han times, China’s earliest written record on medicine was codified in the 1st-century BC, the Huangdi Neijing ''(Yellow Emperor’s Canon of Medicine), which describes acupuncture and herbal medicine in great detail. Chinese physician Hua Tuo (d. 208 AD) used anesthetic during surgery and prescribed an antiseptic that allegedly sped the healing process of surgical wounds. The period saw many other significant advances: the Chinese skill in working bronze was applied to the invention of the crossbow soon after 200 BC, unknown in Europe until the 10th-century AD; the stern-mounted steering rudder enabled Chinese junk ship to venture into the open sea; general Ma Yuan (d. 49 AD) created the world's first known raised-relief map; Han mathematicians were the first in the world to use negative numbers, and came-up with the method of Gaussian elimination, unknown in Europe until the early 17th-century; experiments with engraved texts were an early stepping-stone on the long journey to the printing press; pulleys and wheelbarrows were used to move heavy weights; the Chinese developed various uses for the waterwheel such as the water-clock and a hammer device for pulverizsing ore and grain; and the polymath Zhang Heng (d. 139 AD) applied his extensive knowledge of mechanics to several inventions including a seismometer for detecting earthquakes. The discovery of gunpowder is often attributed to Taoists alchemists during Han times, in their pursuit of the answer to eternal life; gunpowder wasn't truly understood or applied to warfare until after 1000 AD. The Han had their share of turmoil as well as triumphs. The dynasty could never run-out of heirs since the sons of concubines were considered legitimate, but palace intrigue was endemic and deadly; there was constant jockeying for position among the emperor's wife and concubines to get their son named as heir. After the reign of Emperor Wu DI (d. 87 BC), it became apparent that him military campaigns had overtaxed the empire, and political factionalism took root between those arguing for aggressive and expansionist policies, opposed by those favouring caution and frugality. In 9 AD, there was a fourteen year interregnum in the Han, when Wang Mang (9–23 AD), the chief minister and acting regent for a boy emperor, usurped the throne. Like his contemporary Caesar Augustus, Wang Mang was apparently well meaning, intent of rejuvenating the faltering empire. While there was a general rise in prosperity under the Han, the gap between rich and poor was a serious problem. The imperial bureaucracy was almost exclusively made-up of the landed-gentry, thus the great families were able to gather more and more land under their personal control, and life for the peasantry became increasingly difficult. Wang introduced a series of radical reforms to breaking-up the large estates and redistribute the land, but his reforms proved ill-conceived, and poorly executed. Coupled with a terrible flooding of the Yellow River, the signed were clear that Wang had lost the ''Mandate of Heaven. The resulting full-scale peasant rebellion sacked Xi’an in 23 AD, and the imperial family were able to recover the throne; the decapitated head of Wang Mang was preserved in the imperial archives for the next 200 years. From this time the capital moved east to Luoyang, and the period is sometimes called Eastern Han. Much of the former glory of the dynasty returned during the strong reigns of Emperor Ming (57-75 AD) and his son Emperor Zhang (75-88 AD), but then Han China entered a long period of decline. It was during this period that the eunuchs went from guards of the royal harem, to playing an active role in imperial politics, where they would earn a well-deserved reputation as self-serving meddlers and manipulators of emperors. By 184 AD, the government was in complete disarray. With the end of the Han Dynasty, we enter a very chaotic period of Chinese history, and only a rough outline can be put together; the '''Period of Disunion (184-589 AD). A peasant revolt known as the Yellow Turban Rebellion (184–205 AD) plunged late Han China into two decades of chaos. Although the uprising was eventually suppressed at great cost, the military leaders appointed during the crisis refused to disbanded their armies, instead establishing themselves as regional warlords all across China. These coalesced in three major factions known as Cao Wei, Eastern Wu, and Shu Han. At first it seemed the Cao Wei would prevail, but having reunified the north, their attempt to control all of China ended in a decisive defeat at the famous naval Battle of Red Cliffs (208 AD). Thus the end of the Han Dynasty, transitioned into the period of the Three Kingdoms (208–280 AD), one of the bloodiest in Chinese history. Its central figures were later immortalised in one of China's great literary masterpieces, the Romance of the Three Kingdoms ''by Guanzhong (d. 1360 AD). In the end, none of the three major factions prevailed, and instead the ''Mandate of Heaven passed to a former vassal of the Cao Wei, the Jin Dynasty (266–304 AD), who overthrew the Cao Wei in 266 and unified all China in 280. But this union was short-lived. During decades of internal conflict, China had fallen back on a policy tried elsewhere to help with barbarian pressure on the northern frontiers; bringing some of the tribes within the Wall and deploying them in its defence. When the Jin fell into a period of internecine civil war during the reign of a mentally unstable emperor, these non-Han Chinese settlers rebelled and northern China fragmented into sixteen independent kingdoms, most of which were founded by the "Five Barbarians" (Xiongnu, Xianbei, Jie, Di and Qiang). Yet these barbarian intruders did not damaged the foundations of Chinese civilization; their kingdoms were administered by natives in as Chinese a way as possible. Gradually, China’s striking powers of cultural assimilation are observable, and the barbarians lost their own identities, becoming just another kind of Chinese. The Jin Dynanty meanwhile survived; fleeing south, they reestablish a capital at Nanjing, and limped on for another century as the Eastern Jin (317-420 AD). There thus emerged a sharp distinction between northern and southern China. In the war-ravaged north, the Sixteen Kingdoms (304-439) fought against each other and prompted large-scale Han Chinese migration south of the Yangtze River. As was seen in the Warring States period, China’s most important developments did not only occur during periods of unity. One of the most important changes of this period was the flourishing of Buddhism. The first Buddhists had reached China along the Silk Road in the 1st-century AD. Although scorned by the Confucians, they found themselves warmly welcomed by the indigenous Taoists, who saw in them as kindred souls. Both regions shared the concept of monasticism, appealing to those who felt the appeal of a quietistic movement as an outlet from the growing complexity of Chinese life. And both were profoundly different from the Chinese alternative; the worldly philosophy of Confucianism. During the turmoil of the 4th-century AD, the old Confucian ideal of balance and order appeared less realistic, and Buddhism gained many adherents especially among the downtrodden (commoners and women), attracted by its promise that all could achieve salvation. Buddhism's success was indeed astonishing, and visible proof of its vitality during this period can be seen in some of China’s finest Buddhist art. The famous Longmen Grottoes near Luoyang would be a phenomenon in the history of sculpture in sheer quantity, if in nothing else; as many as 100,000 individual statues within the 2,345 caves, ranging from 1 inch to 57 feet in height. The man who finally succeeded in reuniting China in 589 AD, forming the Sui Dynasty (589-618 AD), was an enthusiastic patron of Buddhism. His dynasty proved short-lived and was followed by the next of the five great Chinese dynasties, the Tang Dynasty (618-907). Worlds Apart of Classical Antiquity By the end of Classical Antiquity, most of the globe’s surface was then still without civilisation, but what was civilised fell into relatively few zones in each of which powerful, distinctive, often self-conscious and largely independent traditions were at work. Their differences were to go on deepening for another thousand years or so, until by about 1453 AD mankind was probably more diversified than ever before or since. One result was that Chinese, Indian, Western European and later Islamic civilizations all lived independently long enough to leave ineradicable traces in the ground-plan of our world. Everywhere, the weight of tradition was enormous and unquestionable, if different. The Middle Ages would see the expansion and growth of civilization into new geographic areas across Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. Of course, variety in cultural development had already produced different technologies. In this, Chinese thinkers made among the most important advances, particularly the so-called Five Great Inventions of China. The first, the process for paper-making, had already been discovered before the end of Classical Antiquity. Clear evidence of the second, the stirrup which was crucial in the development of heavy cavalry, only appears during the period of chaos following the decline of the Han. The other three had made considerable strides: gunpowder, the printing press, and the compass. The discovery of gunpowder is often attributed to experimentation in Chinese alchemy by Taoists during Han times, in their pursuit of the answer to eternal life; it wasn't truly understood or applied to warfare until after 1000 AD. In the 4th-century AD, Confucian scholars made copies of important texts, by laying sheets of black paper on slabs of engraved text and rubbing all over with charcoal to leave white letters; an early stepping-stone on the long journey to the printing press. Mankind everywhere has long speculated upon the phenomenon observed in Lodestone, naturally occurring magnetic iron oxide, which attracts small pieces of iron, but it was the Chinese in the 11th-century AD who discovered that a magnet allowed to move freely points north, thus inventing the compass. Category:Historical Periods